


One Constant

by heli0s



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Polyamory, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 12:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20907341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heli0s/pseuds/heli0s
Summary: It's been five years without Bucky. You and Steve travel to Vormir for the Soulstone to bring him back.





	One Constant

It’s absolutely insane the lengths Steve Rogers would go to in order to save the ones he loves. He is feeling this sentiment now as you clutch his hand in one and grip the edge of your seat with the other, warping at top speed into the depths of inky black space. Kaleidoscopic lights zoom by, and he feels dizzy just thinking about the fact that he is _traveling through space_.

But just a few moments ago, he had travelled through _time_, so space could have well been a logical next step.

If he is feeling nervous, or possibly about to vomit, he doesn’t show it.

He only grips your hand a little tighter, strokes the bone-white knuckles of your fist a little slower, leans over and kisses you a bit harder.

“We got it, baby.” He soothes, “He’ll be back soon.”

“I swear to God, Steve, if he isn’t, I will personally remove every single one of Thanos’ teeth with my bare fucking hands.”

Steve grins and brings your palm to his lips, kissing the creases. He knows you well enough to trust in your promise. Vormir lies only a half hour away as they reach their destination and descend slowly into the rusty red atmosphere.

You strap the sleek black Ka-Bar to your thigh, fingers running over the handle lovingly, as if you were touching a part of _him_. And in some ways, you are. It’s one small reminder the two of you have had for five years. His favorite knife. A reminder of the love lost in the snap.

For the first year, you refused to even say his name. You railed against any possible attempt to return your days to normalcy, and even frustrated Steve on nights when you’d stumble through the empty compound completely in shambles, gripping that Ka-Bar, slamming it into the wall, livid and drunk, screaming and crying.

A part of him felt a little sting of jealousy and curiosity. He wondered if you would have cared this much if it was him that had been lost.

The same part of him also felt ashamed because at the end of every episode, you would be curled up on the floor, or in the bed, or sometimes in the shared closet, hugging Bucky’s clothes, repeating the same broken phrase to his ghost.

_Come back. Come back to us. Come back to us, please._

_Us,_ not _me. _

Steve would wrap his arms around you, pull you close, tell you he’s got you now.

Even though he’s clean shaven and carefully coiffed, a picture-perfect representation of his moniker, even though he leads sermons at the VA about moving on and forward, he knows a part of him would never let Bucky go. You would never let him.

Steve isn’t only saving Bucky on this journey; Steve is also saving _you_.

“Steve.” You whisper, “Steve.” A little firmer the second time. “I love you.”

Then you’re in his lap, forgoing your own seat and squeezing him so tightly his breath gets lodged in this throat. “Don’t go, too. Promise me.”

Steve wraps his arms around you, the lover he always dreamed of having—sweeter than sugar, doe-eyed, a goddess in human form, one part of the third of his heart. You and Bucky had been so close, even in your shared relationship—he always felt a little left out. Even though it was him first. Even though Bucky came later.

The ship whirrs mindlessly forward, autopilot on, technology beyond his understanding steering itself. You shake in his arms. “Take it off.” You mutter, suddenly clawing at his suit, fingers desperate to find his buckles and zippers.

“Take it off, Steve!”

He does as he’s told, albeit confusedly, but soon enough he’s stripped down and you are shedding your clothing too, straddling his waist with frantic breaths.

“I want to fuck.”

“Sweetheart—“

“_Now_. Steve.”

He always lets you have what you want. Against the backdrop of inky darkness and muted far off stars, swirling planets colored in shades he doesn’t know how to name, you palm him and glide on top.

There are tears in your eyes when you lean your head on his shoulder. “I miss him.” You sob, “I miss him so much.”

“I know.” Steve kisses you deeply, rocks up into you until you shudder all over. He presses his lips to your eyes and cheeks, traces the line of salt down to your chin, and rolls deep strokes of his cock in and out until you both come.

“I love you.” You sigh against his neck, landing a chaste kiss to the lobe of his ear.

It’s been like this for five years, oscillating between tender and torn, high and low, and not much in-between. Before the snap, you had been their shy girl, lover not a fighter, even though your hands could crush granite. Pressed between them in a feverish haze, you were still soft, and they were gentle as a result.

They would always be gentle with you. Even Bucky, who had the pent-up sexual energy of an animal in rut. You would put his fingertips in your mouth, lick the pads with slow flicks of your tongue, and he would melt. _Sugar_, he’d croon, _gorgeous girl, how’d we get so lucky?_

Now, when Steve gets you into bed you put his hand to your neck and make him squeeze. You ask him to hurt you and he hates it.

You’re different. Things have changed.

The ship descends, blowing clouds of dust all around and Steve is so beyond thinking about this landscape that he doesn’t give a shit anymore about how they can even survive the atmosphere. Four boots trek on wordlessly until they reach the peak of the lonely jagged mountain.

A billowing cloak and gaunt cheeks appear.

“Schmidt.” Steve hisses, gearing back for a fight, but you put your hand up and step forward instead, that Ka-Bar already in your hand.

“Don’t fuck with me, Skeletor. You know what I want.”

-

He’s a self-sacrificing asshole and he almost killed you to launch himself off the cliffside. The crack of his skull echoes and is smothered by your shrieking hundreds of feet above the site of his death.

“No! You fucking promised! You fucking promised you wouldn’t fucking leave!” You howl and howl and slam your fists into the rock until it cracks and crumbles into dust.

Those will be the last words he’ll ever hear. Your throat gone raw and the venom and disappointment and _hurt_ inside of you sputtering out wet with blood.

You launch yourself at Schmidt and pass right through his shadow.

“Superhuman or not,” his voice is a ghostly warble, “You cannot kill me. I am free now to roam and leave this planet.” The tight skin peels back to reveal his teeth.

Your head is falling apart. Both of them, gone, and even if the stone will be used to bring one back, you’ll live again with a piece of your heart missing. The tears blur everything, turning it into one giant blotch of orange. The speck of red and murky black stills and whips around, in shock.

“What-- how?”

You wipe your eyes as Schmidt peers over the edge. The planet rumbles and shakes, wailing an ear-splitting shriek and your head spins until there’s nothing left but the pounding of your brain rattling loose.

It’s wet when you wake up. Water laps over your face and for a second you forget where you are, how you ache, but when it rushes back the sea feels like tears.

There is no stone in your clutch.

But there is something else. Soft. Small. Delicate bones and skin so pale, it could be a child’s.

Steve’s right hand reaches over his torso, shrunken, now too small to fit rightly in his suit and it wrinkles and warps around him. The gangly fingers open and reveal the amber gem, shimmering against the darkness of the water and your eyes.

“You’re alive.” You rasp. “You’re here.”

“I-I’m back... t-to before...” He’s half in awe and in shock. There is a disappointment that mars his brow and tilts his mouth down deep until it looks like it could fall off his chin. His hands pat his chest, pulls the bunched Kevlar and neoprene away from him. “I--” Steve clenches his jaw.

You’ll never see him the same again. He’s different now. You’ve never known or loved this version of him. It’ll be just you and Bucky, like he’s always thought and feared. Steve’s mind flies a mile a minute, swirling in self-hatred and pain.

How could you look at him like this? Tiny, fragile, sickly thing that he’s been before. He’ll be invisible again, sinking into the backdrop, eclipsed once more by James Buchanan Barnes’ tall frame and fine figure. You’ll never--

You leap into his arms, knock him backwards with a splash. “Thank god!” You cry, dripping salt down his face, soft lips trailing all over him. “Oh, fuck, baby.”

If he wasn’t so stubborn, you’d pick him up, but instead you settle on dragging him by the wrist back to the ship where you tear off the stupid too-large suit from him, push him on the smooth floor and giggle as the engine rumbles back to life.

The jerk of the ship taking flight smashes his chest into yours. Steve burns red with embarrassment and tries to push you off, but you won’t budge.

He’s too weak now, something that turns him almost purple with shame.

“S-stop— I’m--”

“Don’t fuck with me, Rogers.” You hold his wrists down, “I still love you, no matter what you look like. I love you, you little asthmatic shit.” You kiss him and undress and he’s baffled, heart hammering in its cage- short of breath and wheezing. Your hands make quick work of him and he’s hard like a rock when your mouth goes south.

“Still the same down here, baby.” 

When he comes a stuttering, blubbering, mess all over your stomach, Steve’s eyes roll so far back he thinks he needs to add blindness to his list of ailments.

-

Bucky’s head is wrenched backwards as soon as you find him over the hill. Among the chaos and terror of an enormous battlefield, aliens screeching, guns and blasters, and sizzling ancient magic, you leap, legs wrapped around his torso and kiss him with too much tongue.

“Shit, baby!” He laughs before ducking down, taking you with him, “Fuck! Can ya save it for later?”

You’re different. Your once-blue suit is black and your eyes are painted all the way up to your brow with soot colored shadow, reminiscent of the way he used to as _Soldat_. Usually, your hair is pulled back and away from your face, but now it hangs all around, whipping over your cheeks with the wind. You look fearsome.

And, God he thinks, you’re beautiful. Although you might have once been a pink and blushing rose, you’re now suddenly bleeding red and silky, overgrown with thorns, still beautiful.

Then, his head turns back and forth, “Wh-where is he?”

You smile shyly and kiss him on the cheek while readjusting the strap of his gun. For a brief second you look like the pink flower again.

“Don’t worry,” You say, “He’s okay. He’s got to sit this one out, but I told him I’d bring him back two presents.”

Bucky squints.

“Two?”

-

Jesus fucking Christ on a stick Bucky’s heart is going to drop right out of his ass. You are straddling Thanos’ neck with your thighs. The _Titan_—the semi-god or whatever he is—you are on top of him and wrenching his jaw open.

Bucky doesn’t know if he should scream or cry or faint.

Next to him, Danvers is matching his expression. “What the hell?” She breathes and he has no fucking idea. Mantis is shrieking and you are shrieking right back.

“Don’t be a _pussy! _Hold the motherfucker!”

Bucky could cross himself right now because their sweet girl, their angel, is digging into Thanos’ mouth with his Ka-Bar and pulling her hand back out drenched in blood.

-

Afterwards, you’re still sticky. The blood coats all five fingers but you skip past the ash and dust and grab his face with your hand and plant another kiss on him. Wilson shakes his head, mutters about how it used to be the other way around and a part of Bucky abruptly catches up to the truth.

You are different. You’re hard and lethal and it hurts him so much to think that he wasn’t there. The fact that he wasn’t there is _all_ he can think about. His absence left you raw and moldable. It must have hurt so much, for their girl to transform from satin to steel.

“Come on,” You say with a grin he’s never seen before, “Let’s go get Steve.”

And then it hurts differently. The guilt starts eating him through his stomach and up his throat because Steve has been with you all this time, watching helplessly—all because Bucky got dusted. It must have killed Steve to see you crumble and rebuild into who you are now. Killed him to not be able to do a damn thing. Killed him for five years, even though Bucky is the one who died.

-

Back at the compound, Steve sits nervously in the shared room, chews on every inch of his mouth until the skin hangs from his lip and then he chews it off, too. It used to smell like all three of you: brisk pine and cedar with the faint drift of freesia. 

A part of it still does, dusky and sweet, but salty too. Acrid, if he breathes too deeply. Stinging and dark, like bourbon.

_Huh_. Steve thinks, maybe he’ll have a drink. Now that he can again.

By the time you swing the door open, Steve is piss drunk and wheezing sprawled out on the floor. Bucky’s breath lodges in his throat as you stumble over to Steve’s collapsed body.

“What the fuck!” You cry, patting him down, checking his pulse.

“S-Stevie?” Bucky breathes, “Is that you, pal?”

With a shuddering breath, you turn around and show him your teeth, a wet laugh springing forward, “We— we had to go.. to Vormir. Get the damn stone back in time and— I could have died.”

Steve wheezes again, “Wouldn’t have let you.” He hiccups, fingers lazily reaching up to poke you in the nose. “Nope.”

He pops the p.

Bucky steps cautiously forward, resurrected only hours ago and has no idea what Vormir is. Nor does he care. All he sees are his lovers, transmuted entirely by their loss— by their love for him.

It’s all changed. Everything is different and terribly new. You wipe the dark streak from your eyes and wipe Steve’s face too as Bucky stands speechless. The two of you together, leaned against each other on the floor. Bucky thinks, how many nights did this happen? How long did his two lovers suffer and cry for him?

Softly, he pads forward, kneels, and takes each hand into his. “I love you. Both of you.”

Steve looks away and so do you, nostrils flaring to hold back the torrent of tears threatening to explode. “I’m sorry.” Bucky whispers, kissing your cheek and then Steve’s feeling the sharp bone of him through the face he had known so well long ago. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

The room is so still Bucky’s afraid he might be getting dusted again, back into that terrible split second where the world stops, and he knows nothing else but the speck of sand suspended in motion. Then, a snort.

“The hell’re you sorry for? S’not like you wanted to turn into dust. Or ash. What’s another—hm. Baby powder. Buck, ya got baby powder-ed.”

Even though he’s small and asthmatic again, Steven Grant Rogers is undeniably more of a little shit than ever. It doesn’t help that he’s drunk as a skunk, breath spicy warm with the heady draught of liquor.

To his right, you laugh and ruffle his hair. Steve flinches at your touch and pulls away with a scowl. You freeze and glare right back at him, grabbing his shoulder until he winces, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” You hiss. “He’s back. He’s right _here_ and what the fuck, Steve?”

“Yeah.” Steve grunts, shrugging off your hand, “He’s back. So be with him. Be with him like you’ve wanted to for the last five years.”

Bucky watches the tension roil in waves, emanating from your bared teeth and Steve’s downcast eyes. He doesn’t know when to step in or how to begin to stop the train wreck unfolding in front of him. Steve is piss drunk and pissed off—haven’t had a drink probably since 1942 and is completely off his rocker. You look like you’re ready to snap his neck like a pretzel stick.

It scares Bucky.

It scares him when you dig into your pocket and pull out the tooth he watched you wrench from Thanos earlier. For whatever blessed or cursed reason, it remains as it is, enormous like a half-dollar, shining dully and crusted with Titan blood.

“Here’s this, asshole.” The tooth bounces off Steve’s sternum with a dull thud, landing in his lap. Then you take Bucky’s old Ka-Bar and throw it at Steve, too. “And here’s this, you self-flagellating shithead.”

Bucky winces at your words. He’s never heard them before. Ever. Tears well up in your eyes.

“If you hadn’t come back on that dusty ass planet, I would have thrown myself off too. Fuck the stone. Fuck Earth and Vormir and fuck everyone else, too. I would have died with you.” A choked sob escapes as you glare into the side of Steve’s face, suddenly pinched with embarrassment, “You’re an idiot.”

Bucky sighs in relief when Steve looks up and leans forward onto your shoulder, resting his golden head against you. “Sorry, baby.” He mutters, “I just—I hate… this. I’m not… Captain America anymore. I’m just… Steve.”

Bucky starts to laugh, despite the moment. He laughs and leans back until he slips off his knee and foot and falls back on his bottom. You and Steve turn, bewildered at the sound of him, slight smirks on both of your faces because regardless of it all, Bucky is alive, and he is happy.

“Captain America was an asshole.” Bucky exhales, mirth in his eyes, “Tightwad. Stick so far up there he was chokin’ on it.”

Steve sputters an indignant response.

“I like you much better.” Bucky says, leaning forward and placing his hand on Steve’s jaw, pressing a soft kiss onto his swollen red lips. “This guy… dumb Brooklyn kid who didn’t know when to give up.”

“That’s not the quote goes.” Steve hiccups, drawing from an old memory. His head hangs low, embarrassed at himself, leaning into the warmth of Bucky’s palm.

“Well, I wasn’t there in the forties, but I like this new quote just fine.” You grin, reaching forward to smooth Steve’s disheveled hair back. “You done?”

He nods, reaches out and takes your hand and you return his gesture with a light squeeze.

Bucky grins at his two lovers, sitting cross-legged on the floor. One, who used to be soft, hardened like diamonds, and one, reverted completely... but to Bucky, Steve hasn’t changed at all. He was telling the truth when he said this version of Steve was his favorite.

Five years and the changes have stripped all he’s known away—the transformation of the lives around him makes Bucky sigh with uneasiness. He can’t help it. He feels like he’s always in a state of falling asleep and waking up to an entirely new world.

Steve kisses your mouth, kisses Bucky too. The three of you share quiet gazes at one another before you begin to unhook your vest and look at him behind long lashes. Your hands work nimbly, just like he remembers. Steve strokes your arm, guides Bucky forward to help you with your clothes. That’s familiar too.

Bucky smiles and presses his lips to the apples of your cheeks. Still soft.

“Did you miss us?” Steve asks, steering him further, “Buck?”

“Yeah. I did.”

You moan faintly into his mouth, strip down until you’re naked and then move to help Steve, too. Bucky watches in awe of those deft movement, swallowing when both bodies are revealed to him in the lamplight glow of the bedroom.

When he sheds his clothes to match, he can’t help but smile at the two faces contemplating back at him.

Maybe some things are different now, Bucky thinks. But the love is still the same.

You and Steve run your hands all over his body, kiss him everywhere your lips can touch. Bucky blooms all over with heat and electricity. He melts into twenty fingers and two hot mouths.

Yeah. The love is still the same. And it is so damn good.


End file.
